Ray Romano mines father-son relationships – Somewhere in Queens review | Films | Entertainment

British audiences familiar with early morning TV may know Ray Romano as the star of US sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond.

In his big-hearted and gently amusing directorial debut, Romano plays Leo, a caring, middle-aged Italian-American who works at his father’s small construction company.

While his sharp-tongued wife Angela (Laurie Metcalf) recovers from a cancer operation, Leo has been living through his son Matthew (Jacob Ward).

Everyone in Matthew’s boisterous extended family calls him Sticks due the long legs that helped make him the star player of his high school basketball team.

Sticks suffers from anxiety and briefly finds his feet when he starts dating confident Dani (Sadie Stanley).

But when she dumps him days before he is due to try for a college team, Sticks loses his nerve and his dad makes a morally dubious decision.

He offers to pay the girl to pretend to be interested in his son until after his trial.

This set-up could power a sitcom. But Romano is less interested in gags and more intent on mining the relationship between fathers and sons.

Somewhere in Queens, Cert 15, On digital from Monday